Primus

In terms of usability this is a massive backward step for staff. There's definitely a balance to be struck but disabling any client access and forcing only web app is a huge step and will likely see staff miss emails and use emails to communicate less. At some point you're going to push their communication into areas you can't control - texts, WhatsApp etc. It is possible to have mobile or client access to email and keep it as secure as required. Even with web app you're not stopping them downloading attachments, copying and pasting text, taking screenshots etc.

Yes we have Unifi in an offsite provision and it can see clients back on our main school network - it's quite useful on occasion! I should say this is by design as it's an extension of our site so has the exact same vLANs etc.

I may be wrong but my understanding is that to do inter-vLAN routing you require the USG if you're going full stack Unifi.

Absolute nonsense.

Alan this may well be your experience but it certainly isn't my experience with Dell critical care on my servers and SAN! Dell keeps adequate stock of replacement parts to do like for like in just the same way that HP does with their switches and lifetime warranty - I've had a switch or 2 fail but even many years after they were produced I get the exact same switch in replacement.

In terms of safeguarding if you're using G Suite then Securly offer a free auditing tool (Securly Auditor) that will monitor emails for inappropriate content and warn you: https://www.securly.com/auditor

Notebook 11 has the same issue for us with Office 2016.

So if I'm concerned that a school is suffering from frequent connectivity issues my priorities are in the wrong place? Depending on how the school teaches (eg. using G Suite or Office 365) frequent connectivity issues could seriously hinder progress. Don't we want schools to make use of technology where appropriate? Do you think teachers will make use of technology that is very unreliable? What about schools using SIP etc - connectivity issues can be even more serious for them. Can I not be concerned that a company is taking tax payers money and not delivering an appropriate service?

But whether it's a supplier fault or not the fact is that you pay SB for a service that is not currently being delivered and has had problems for quite some time - how they procure their services isn't your concern beyond the fact that it works. It's unfortunate they've picked something that doesn't work right but that's their problem and their responsibility. It seems fairly clear that if you're one of the schools affected you're having a huge lack of bandwidth on a regular basis and conversations in the background don't really matter since it's still occurring. It's odd that he'd defend a service that his schools are clearly frustrated with - if my ISP kept letting me down like this there's no chance I'd be defending them and I'd definitely be exploring the legal options as I know some schools have in order to extricate myself from such a situation. This is tax payers money that this company is receiving and the education of children that they are affecting by their inability to provide a stable service, whether or not I have their service in my schools I may well know people unfortunate to have purchased their solution and I'm also a tax payer - funds that we all contribute are going to a company that has dropped the ball pretty spectacularly. I may also have children of my own in a school where SB provide connectivity so to suggest I cannot take part in this discussion is ridiculous.

It's interesting because they clearly haven't got their load balanced properly otherwise everyone or no one would have issues - the fact that some people are ok is interesting. The bottleneck is in a system designed and implemented by SB that is clearly not fit for purpose. What's also interesting is that @synaesthesia has been defending SB but then has admitted that when he rang schools they they weren't surprised there was an issue with their broadband - doesn't that say it all?

To be fair it was the people who are actually using their products who are complaining. Clearly there are a fair few schools who are unhappy and seem to be experiencing very poor service. Others have only commented when the excuses coming from SB are poor. It's interesting that they're blaming shared filtering yet some customers are fine.

I think what you have to understand is that there are many schools who use SB and have a substandard service, SB are making excuses that don't add up and those of us who know this are chipping in. Schools who have hosted firewalls and filtering have broadly the same needs as schools who host their own - ie. a functioning Internet connection at a reasonable speed such as the package they have chosen. SB sell services based on them being leased lines with particular service levels (for the schools we are talking about here). They have then implemented something which does not perform adequately. Cutting people slack is all well and good but this is a company deriving a profit from tax payers whilst offering a substandard service over an extended period of time. If schools considering SB see these threads and avoid them as a business then that's to be expected and completely understandable. In short they're not in a similar situation to schools at all, they're meant to be experts in what they do and they're charging schools for their service - they are still offering advice to people on here about technical solutions for UTMs etc when their own house isn't in order!

It's their job to spec hardware and software that will do the job required - it's perfectly possible to have shared filtering etc. without these issues.

We have had our Internet provided by Virgin Media for years and years now, originally 100mb/1gb and now 1gb/1gb - at no point have we ever had throughput issues. Sure there's been occasional downtime - usually related to people in diggers going through cables but if an ISP cannot maintain reasonable speeds for customers by balancing load to prevent the kinds of problems SB customers are having then there's something seriously wrong. In addition if a company did have problems you'd expect them to get a grip on it, however we have customers of SB on this very thread saying it's been like this for years. Obviously no ISP is going to be able to sell lines at a reasonable price that are completely uncontended beyond the ISP, however to suggest that some schools are hammering the bandwidth and this therefore reduces other schools to very very slow speeds is quite frankly ridiculous.

Likewise a competent company would not have allowed this situation to have arisen in the first place!

Totally agree!

No worries - where are the few you mention? Can't see them!

@Al_NetSupport Are there any audio files provided for the different notification types? Would quite like to set some of them to have an audio notification but before I go finding some I wondered if NetSupport provided any?

Surely SB should be able to throttle the schools that are hammering their uplinks with Windows Updates to prevent everyone suffering? Traffic management should be able to prevent this from being as bad as it is. Staggering that there must be so many schools not using WSUS or SCCM with WUS!

Getech are excellent - used them loads.

It's fine to virtualise DCs. Previously you needed a physical DC if you had a cluster but since Server 2012 it's not needed. Having a physical DC isn't a bad idea if you have a spare piece of tin however.

No, iPads in DEP cannot have their profile removed by the user - only through the MDM console.

Same here - use it all the time when a student has misplaced their iPad. We do have the setup using USB-Lightning and USB-Ethernet for occasions where one does drop off - a rebooted iPad won't connect to WiFi until the passcode is put in - I wish Apple would change this so it would connect to known trusted wifi after a reboot! An iPad stuck in lost mode can be reset using DFU as normal however some iPads do seem to play silly beggars with actually getting them to reset and wipe but we've not had one yet that hasn't been able to be done.

Not a happy bunny at all. Couldn't write on here how I'm currently feeling about G Suite.

Seems to be.